Hm, 90 minutes really isn´t much time.
We are talking about all pieces in high and low + normal maps, right?
90 minutes for the buckle, if you´ve modeled such a thing before- that´d be good, I think.
I created similar stuff before. It´s not very hard to do and so you might think you can finish them in a couple of minutes but they will take you way longer.
Im with ysalex on this one. Even with baking it shouldnt take any more than 2-3 hours. 1.5hrs is completely reasonable if youre just using a tiles normal for the weaving. and modeling a buckle like that is no more that 15-20m unless you are inexperienced with modeling anything hard surface. Other than that his bag has no complicated folds or extremely complicated sculpted detail. Like ysalex said, If this was a client job id quote 4-5 hours, and easily complete this within 2 hours, then use the extra time for changes.
EDIT- i just thought i should add my experience here with creating something like this. I completely sculpted, modeled and textured a tac-vest for a soldier for work in about 10ish hours. The only reason it took even this long was each ammo pouch was sculpted with different folds. Sculpting took 2ish hours, re-meshing it took about 1, The baking on that, which is a lot more only took about 45minutes in x-normal, and the texturing (which had very limited repeating) took around 5.
I think the main thing people are forgetting is the difference between client work and personal/portfolio work.
If it's client work and just any old bag in the game, then yeah like 3-6 hours as it's unimportant asset that doesn't require that much time spent or indeed quality.
Portfolio quality would then mean 1 day+ as you have all the time in the world to make it looks as perfect as possible from all angles.
But yeah huge respect to Ysalex for backing up the claim and generally doubling the time you think you would spend on something is always best because we are only human haha
Now, resize that image down to a quarter of the size, how much time would it take to make that prop to hold up at that visual fidelity? Unless this is for a First Person Bagging game, the detail on the clips and strap are fine.
For a portfolio, only make awesome things - if the bag is for your portfolio have it be part of a larger scene.
This piece is for a client and I had 1 reference image from google. I used to work there, so I know what the product looks like, but it's been 1.5 yrs so I can't really remember it well.
Nice work on the bag ysalex. Sculpting the cloth took the most time for me. Other than the general shape, I would say that is the main difference between mine and yours. Out of curiosity, did you model the zipper as well? Not that it's hard to run an alpha down the middle of your piece.. more curious than anything else.
Also, fixing the normal map is a part of the process. I would say that could easily eat up 1-2 hours of your time, depending on how complex the model is. You can't send a client a model that has a bunch of normal map errors when they can rotate around it, zoom in and get close to everything.
I think a big part that people don't factor in are those small issues. They eventually add up. I would never (maybe) quote a client 1 day for anything.
Under promise and over produce - not the other way around!
If you have done similar stuff before you might have some alphas that do the job very fast. That way, you only need to drag some alphas and displacement map in Zbrush and you´re done. If not, it needs sime time.
@ C86G - true, but I'm still trying to get a grip on sculpting cloth, so I don't want to cheat myself in that way. I could make alphas out of some cloth I've already sculpted or get reference.. but I really want to wrap my head around how cloth works.
But I completely agree - that is a good way to get decent cloth out quick.
I think the best answer is: Whatever your deadline is, -1 day for revisions based on feedback.
Something like this would be tasked out in a time budget of Days rather than Hours. Personally, something like that would take me a good day and a bit to make it solid and not half assed.
if you modelled it on a moving train would it be done any faster?
Haha probably because you're moving at the same time witch imply that the movement used to accomplish the task travel faster in the infinit loop of time!!! :P
I think the main thing people are forgetting is the difference between client work and personal/portfolio work.
If it's client work and just any old bag in the game, then yeah like 3-6 hours as it's unimportant asset that doesn't require that much time spent or indeed quality.
Portfolio quality would then mean 1 day+ as you have all the time in the world to make it looks as perfect as possible from all angles.
But yeah huge respect to Ysalex for backing up the claim and generally doubling the time you think you would spend on something is always best because we are only human haha
WHAT? are you telling us that your personnal portfolio is a subterfuge and make people have false expectation? And how can u claim that this bag is not the most important piece in the game?
I went ahead and took down everyone's estimates to calculate the average. It came out at 12 and a half hours. I used 8 hours to represent a day, and ignored PogoP's 200 hour estimate because I felt that it might skew the results.
So about 1 and half working days.
There is nothing more important than what we're doing right here, right now, in this thread.
I'd give myself a full day to do it and add another half day for padding (padding for me is general clean up of any errors and texture tweaks)
So 12 hours in total.
There is nothing more important than what we're doing right here, right now, in this thread.
This.
I love this thread. I have been wondering what the general data is regarding the amount of time spent on assets. I wish more people would include the time spent in their breakdowns. There a tons of variables obviously, but it is nice to see it discussed. Hat tip to ysalex, and I think it would be cool to see a thread like this once every week or two. Asset intro > time estimation/discussion > someone takes a crack at it > further discussion.
My workflow sucks for a lot of reasons. Slow computer, xnormal won't work on my machine for some reason, I don't have nDo, and a general lack of skill or practice. I think, even if I busted my ass, this would probably take me about a full work day or two. 8~16 hours.
Still curious what everyone would quote this new product at, time wise. I'm giving myself 2-3 days. Right now I'm almost done with day 2, so I'm a bit behind schedule. Will most likely take me 4.
I don't know man, but if by "day" you mean 8-10 hours, then I'd say 4-5 days. Really nice work by the way. Is the mesh pocket a micromesh? Or what was your approach to that part? If it is micro mesh, does that bake out well?
ysakex - thanks! By day I mean 8 hours - that's why I was asking people for hours, not days. Some people could consider 1 day = 12hrs work... but yes, I meant 8 hours per day.
The pocket is a micromesh and I've never worked with them before. My plan is to turn the micromesh into geo, export to xnormal and bake w/alpha. I don't foresee any issues with that, but I'll find out tomorrow! I didn't really want to turn this thread into me posting my work, so I might just put up the finished piece instead of the real image, when I'm done.
I'm wondering on what people would quote a client for the first bag. If it takes on average 12.5 hours. Say you charge a client $20 p/hr that's $250 for a bag.
At the back of my mind i'd cringe if i quoted that price to a client; however that's how much the labour costs and isn't unreasonable for a high quality piece. In my experiance some clients can be hard to sell the idea that 3D work actually takes time and can't be created by just pressing a few buttons .
I guess at the end of the day a client would only ask for something that high quality (for a bag) if its for poster art or TVC etc.?
If the client wants the bag as presented here, with the high level of detail and polish, then they should be willing to pay for the time it takes to create that. It shouldn't matter WHAT you're building for them, it should matter how long it takes to get them the quality they ASK for.
That last part is important though. If a client asks you for a game-res bag, you need to get the information from them about how they want it done. You need to know if you are designing a bag that will be in close-up, and therefore needs all the love and time for detailing -- or if they want a bag for the background, which needs much less in terms of time and attention.
If they want a background prop and you give them a hero piece, you're going to have a problem. They're not going to want to pay for the 12 man hours used to create it, and they probably wont have it in their computing budget to have random props with 3K polygons and 2048 maps.
So I would find out how the piece is going to be used, then design it in accordance with that. If they need a hero piece, quote the hero price. If they need a background prop, make them one and quote a reasonable price that reflects the amount of time which you'll spend.
Super cool thread - thanks Polynaut for starting it up and props to you Ysalex for actually putting your estimate to the test. Good info in there...
It really makes me wonder how many man hours are being spent building this kind of buckle and straps over and over again in studios around the world. Crazy stuff to think about really.
Using the data collected by Polynaut I was able to establish that nearly three out of four people will be able to complete the job by the end of the second day.
This has been a really interesting thread - thanks to all that contributed!
Personally, I find it extremely annoying when people make these really aggressive time estimates. Not only does it sell peoples hard work short, (people already assume making video game assets takes hardly any time) but its either down right dishonest or na
Brad, I like your work and you obviously know your stuff as far as doing quality stuff and actually producing for a game, so take this as you will, but I have some problems with what you wrote.
-- which I STILL find hard to believe
First, this insinuation that I either lied or cheated is fairly annoying. And if you want to know what my distraction was, I was working with my 9 month old daughter running around the living room. She takes a certain amount of watching, including feeding, diapers, and playing with her because she's so adorable. I don't sit down to work for clients without a block on time marked out, and without the up-and-down of caring for her, this would have been done faster.
-- Getting a solid understanding of what they want, references, agreeing on a price, contract signing so on and so fourth.
This absolutely is irrelevant. The question is, "how long would this take you", not "How long would you haggle about this with a client".
-- Maybe overly aggressive estimates will impress some people... I dont know, but I have a feeling artists that have been around a while share my skepticism and dont like hearing about it.
And here is the insinuation that I was trying to 'impress' with my estimate. Not sure why you keep knocking against my character here. Did I do something to insult you? My estimate happened to be much closer to the truth for my working speed than others who thought it would take a whole day or two.
_______________________
Think about this asset critically. This I think is extremely important for any game artist.
You're (and all I did) only going to model 1/4th of the bag. This asset is mirrored along both the x and the z axis. This goes for the webbing at the top. This cuts the time to create down dramatically.
Second, there is no texture here. There is a logo, searchable online, and there is some baked lighting, and that is all there is. Other than that, two shades of red diffuse. That's absolutely nothing. So we're not really making a texture up either.
Third, there is a repeating pattern. This pattern takes fifteen or twenty minutes and gets overlayed on the normal, and that is done as well. Minor tweek for the handle (double the overlay, 2 button presses) and your done.
____________
But the main reason my estimate was so low, is because this is a background prop, something very few people are going to look at, and something that isn't going to get a lot of resources dedicated to it, including time.
Part of my quote thinking was: how long would an employer want to see me at my desk, staring at a background prop? Not long. A whole day? Two whole days? Seems ludicrous to work on something like that when it's going to get backed down into a 256x diffuse. Much less, it's going to have a normal map capable of displaying that web weaving at high detail.
Ysalex, You know I respect you as an artist I have said it on these forums in one way or another a few times now. Also, I put two and two together and I figured you had a young child and that was the source of your distraction, I totally get it.
Did you start the clock the second you entered the room? At what point did the clock stop? As you probably know, if you work at a studio you are there for a specific amount of time, and it doesn’t matter how many distractions you have, you are only there for a set amount of hours and can only get so much done in that amount of time. If you are working freelance, you might only have a week to do something, and again, its just a matter of time management as there is only so many hours in a day and problems will arise. The point I was getting at was there are many things to consider even outside the scope of the exact amount of working time something will take.
But the real reason I commented was not to argue exactly what counts as time spent or how it is spent. The thing that bothers me, is that every time people make claims that things take a very short amount of time it can be harmful to others in the art community. Its especially harmful when the estimate is absolutely wrong. Personally, I feel the amount of talent it takes to be a good 3d artist is NOT on par with the salaries they receive. So this is something that I take pretty seriously and I am passionate about. The last thing we need is more people with unrealistic expectations in terms of the cost for these kinds of assets.
You admitted it took about twice as long as you original said, which is still by normal peoples standards incredibly fast to say the least! However that is off by a large margin actually if you were getting paid for this. I just see no benefit to under estimating how long it takes to do something. It’s really nothing against you Ysalex I’m sure it was an honest mistake and you did backup what you said to some degree. But I know for a fact a lot of people do lie about how long they spend on stuff and they are really just shooting themselves in the foot in the long term.
I don't know, for that particular prop, 2-4 hours seems really fair if you've already been doing 3D for years. I mean, it doesn't really have that many difficult shapes and the zbrush sculpting in minimal. I'm going to tackle it tomorrow night for fun and see how long it takes me.
Replies
We are talking about all pieces in high and low + normal maps, right?
90 minutes for the buckle, if you´ve modeled such a thing before- that´d be good, I think.
I created similar stuff before. It´s not very hard to do and so you might think you can finish them in a couple of minutes but they will take you way longer.
EDIT- i just thought i should add my experience here with creating something like this. I completely sculpted, modeled and textured a tac-vest for a soldier for work in about 10ish hours. The only reason it took even this long was each ammo pouch was sculpted with different folds. Sculpting took 2ish hours, re-meshing it took about 1, The baking on that, which is a lot more only took about 45minutes in x-normal, and the texturing (which had very limited repeating) took around 5.
zbrush pass - 30mins
lowpoly pass- 30mins
decimation - 20mins
uvs - 20mins
bakes - 10mins
texturing - 1h
3hs and 50mins for me
If it's client work and just any old bag in the game, then yeah like 3-6 hours as it's unimportant asset that doesn't require that much time spent or indeed quality.
Portfolio quality would then mean 1 day+ as you have all the time in the world to make it looks as perfect as possible from all angles.
But yeah huge respect to Ysalex for backing up the claim and generally doubling the time you think you would spend on something is always best because we are only human haha
For a portfolio, only make awesome things - if the bag is for your portfolio have it be part of a larger scene.
Nice work on the bag ysalex. Sculpting the cloth took the most time for me. Other than the general shape, I would say that is the main difference between mine and yours. Out of curiosity, did you model the zipper as well? Not that it's hard to run an alpha down the middle of your piece.. more curious than anything else.
Also, fixing the normal map is a part of the process. I would say that could easily eat up 1-2 hours of your time, depending on how complex the model is. You can't send a client a model that has a bunch of normal map errors when they can rotate around it, zoom in and get close to everything.
I think a big part that people don't factor in are those small issues. They eventually add up. I would never (maybe) quote a client 1 day for anything.
Under promise and over produce - not the other way around!
If you have done similar stuff before you might have some alphas that do the job very fast. That way, you only need to drag some alphas and displacement map in Zbrush and you´re done. If not, it needs sime time.
But I completely agree - that is a good way to get decent cloth out quick.
Something like this would be tasked out in a time budget of Days rather than Hours. Personally, something like that would take me a good day and a bit to make it solid and not half assed.
Haha probably because you're moving at the same time witch imply that the movement used to accomplish the task travel faster in the infinit loop of time!!! :P
WHAT? are you telling us that your personnal portfolio is a subterfuge and make people have false expectation? And how can u claim that this bag is not the most important piece in the game?
So about 1 and half working days.
There is nothing more important than what we're doing right here, right now, in this thread.
So 12 hours in total.
Idk maybe you included export and clean up.
This.
I love this thread. I have been wondering what the general data is regarding the amount of time spent on assets. I wish more people would include the time spent in their breakdowns. There a tons of variables obviously, but it is nice to see it discussed. Hat tip to ysalex, and I think it would be cool to see a thread like this once every week or two. Asset intro > time estimation/discussion > someone takes a crack at it > further discussion.
My workflow sucks for a lot of reasons. Slow computer, xnormal won't work on my machine for some reason, I don't have nDo, and a general lack of skill or practice. I think, even if I busted my ass, this would probably take me about a full work day or two. 8~16 hours.
Current progress so far (high poly WIP):
Marmoset:
Still curious what everyone would quote this new product at, time wise. I'm giving myself 2-3 days. Right now I'm almost done with day 2, so I'm a bit behind schedule. Will most likely take me 4.
The pocket is a micromesh and I've never worked with them before. My plan is to turn the micromesh into geo, export to xnormal and bake w/alpha. I don't foresee any issues with that, but I'll find out tomorrow! I didn't really want to turn this thread into me posting my work, so I might just put up the finished piece instead of the real image, when I'm done.
At the back of my mind i'd cringe if i quoted that price to a client; however that's how much the labour costs and isn't unreasonable for a high quality piece. In my experiance some clients can be hard to sell the idea that 3D work actually takes time and can't be created by just pressing a few buttons
I guess at the end of the day a client would only ask for something that high quality (for a bag) if its for poster art or TVC etc.?
If the client wants the bag as presented here, with the high level of detail and polish, then they should be willing to pay for the time it takes to create that. It shouldn't matter WHAT you're building for them, it should matter how long it takes to get them the quality they ASK for.
That last part is important though. If a client asks you for a game-res bag, you need to get the information from them about how they want it done. You need to know if you are designing a bag that will be in close-up, and therefore needs all the love and time for detailing -- or if they want a bag for the background, which needs much less in terms of time and attention.
If they want a background prop and you give them a hero piece, you're going to have a problem. They're not going to want to pay for the 12 man hours used to create it, and they probably wont have it in their computing budget to have random props with 3K polygons and 2048 maps.
So I would find out how the piece is going to be used, then design it in accordance with that. If they need a hero piece, quote the hero price. If they need a background prop, make them one and quote a reasonable price that reflects the amount of time which you'll spend.
It really makes me wonder how many man hours are being spent building this kind of buckle and straps over and over again in studios around the world. Crazy stuff to think about really.
This has been a really interesting thread - thanks to all that contributed!
-- which I STILL find hard to believe
First, this insinuation that I either lied or cheated is fairly annoying. And if you want to know what my distraction was, I was working with my 9 month old daughter running around the living room. She takes a certain amount of watching, including feeding, diapers, and playing with her because she's so adorable. I don't sit down to work for clients without a block on time marked out, and without the up-and-down of caring for her, this would have been done faster.
-- Getting a solid understanding of what they want, references, agreeing on a price, contract signing so on and so fourth.
This absolutely is irrelevant. The question is, "how long would this take you", not "How long would you haggle about this with a client".
-- Maybe overly aggressive estimates will impress some people... I dont know, but I have a feeling artists that have been around a while share my skepticism and dont like hearing about it.
And here is the insinuation that I was trying to 'impress' with my estimate. Not sure why you keep knocking against my character here. Did I do something to insult you? My estimate happened to be much closer to the truth for my working speed than others who thought it would take a whole day or two.
_______________________
Think about this asset critically. This I think is extremely important for any game artist.
You're (and all I did) only going to model 1/4th of the bag. This asset is mirrored along both the x and the z axis. This goes for the webbing at the top. This cuts the time to create down dramatically.
Second, there is no texture here. There is a logo, searchable online, and there is some baked lighting, and that is all there is. Other than that, two shades of red diffuse. That's absolutely nothing. So we're not really making a texture up either.
Third, there is a repeating pattern. This pattern takes fifteen or twenty minutes and gets overlayed on the normal, and that is done as well. Minor tweek for the handle (double the overlay, 2 button presses) and your done.
____________
But the main reason my estimate was so low, is because this is a background prop, something very few people are going to look at, and something that isn't going to get a lot of resources dedicated to it, including time.
Part of my quote thinking was: how long would an employer want to see me at my desk, staring at a background prop? Not long. A whole day? Two whole days? Seems ludicrous to work on something like that when it's going to get backed down into a 256x diffuse. Much less, it's going to have a normal map capable of displaying that web weaving at high detail.
Did you start the clock the second you entered the room? At what point did the clock stop? As you probably know, if you work at a studio you are there for a specific amount of time, and it doesn’t matter how many distractions you have, you are only there for a set amount of hours and can only get so much done in that amount of time. If you are working freelance, you might only have a week to do something, and again, its just a matter of time management as there is only so many hours in a day and problems will arise. The point I was getting at was there are many things to consider even outside the scope of the exact amount of working time something will take.
But the real reason I commented was not to argue exactly what counts as time spent or how it is spent. The thing that bothers me, is that every time people make claims that things take a very short amount of time it can be harmful to others in the art community. Its especially harmful when the estimate is absolutely wrong. Personally, I feel the amount of talent it takes to be a good 3d artist is NOT on par with the salaries they receive. So this is something that I take pretty seriously and I am passionate about. The last thing we need is more people with unrealistic expectations in terms of the cost for these kinds of assets.
You admitted it took about twice as long as you original said, which is still by normal peoples standards incredibly fast to say the least! However that is off by a large margin actually if you were getting paid for this. I just see no benefit to under estimating how long it takes to do something. It’s really nothing against you Ysalex I’m sure it was an honest mistake and you did backup what you said to some degree. But I know for a fact a lot of people do lie about how long they spend on stuff and they are really just shooting themselves in the foot in the long term.